SOCIETY QUOTES IV

quotations about society

It can be lonely up at the top
Above your problems and your stress
And if there's trouble then we will take a pill
To find a high society

ENON

"High Society"


It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.

GEORGE ORWELL

1984

Tags: George Orwell


I live in the crowds of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself.

SAMUEL JOHNSON

Rasselas

Tags: Samuel Johnson


The fabric of our complex society is woven too tightly to permit any part of it to be damaged without damaging the whole.

JOE BIDEN

Promises to Keep

Tags: Joe Biden


Too much society makes a man frivolous; too little, a savage.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought

Tags: Christian Nestell Bovee


What impresses men is not mind, but the result of mind. And the greatest of these results is this wonderful spectacle of society, which is ever new, and yet ever the same; in which accidents pass and essence remains; in which one generation dies and another succeeds, as if they were birds in a cage, or animals in a menagerie; of which it seems almost more than a metaphor to treat the parts as limbs of a perpetual living thing, so silently do they seem to change, so wonderfully and so perfectly does the conspicuous life of the new year take the place of the conspicuous life of last year.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Literary Studies

Tags: Walter Bagehot


Society is a sphere that demands all our energies, and deserves all that it demands.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Lacon


Society's failed us, Society's gonna pay
One way or another they'll feel our pain

ROGER MIRET & THE DISASTERS

"The Boys"


In whatever society,
There invariably,
Will seem to be,
Just a few men,
Keen to rule;
Overwhelming,
The majority,
Will assent and
Allow them to do so.

STEREOLAB

"Outer Accelerator"


Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.

OSCAR WILDE

An Ideal Husband

Tags: Oscar Wilde


If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

JOHN F. KENNEDY

Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961

Tags: John F. Kennedy


God designed men to grow as trees grow in open pastures, full-boughed all around; but men in society grow like trees in forests, tall and spindling, the lower ones overshadowed by the higher, with only a little branching, and that at the top. They borrow of each other the power to stand; and if the forest be cleared, and one be left alone, the first wind which comes uproots it.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Society makes. Then society rewards and punishes her handiwork.

JOHN DANIEL BARRY

"Prisoners of Prejudice", Reactions and Other Essays

Tags: John Daniel Barry


No more pay and lots of leisure
In this low society
Low society
I'm just doing what I can
In this low society
But I'm an incidental man

HEAVEN 17

"Low Society"


Look around you: what you have done to society, you have done it first within your soul; one is the image of the other. This dismal wreckage, which is now your world, is the physical form of the treason you committed to your values, to your friends, to your defenders, to your future, to your country, to yourself.

AYN RAND

Atlas Shrugged

Tags: Ayn Rand


Society is no comfort
To one not sociable.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Cymbeline

Tags: William Shakespeare


Society is the only field where the sexes have ever met on terms of equality, the arena where character is formed and studied, the cradle and the realm of public opinion, the crucible of ideas, the world's university, at once a school and a theatre, the spur and the crown of ambition, and the tribunal which unmasks pretension and stamps real merit.

WENDELL PHILLIPS

Fraternity Lecture, October 4, 1859

Tags: Wendell Phillips


The great always sell their society to the vanity of the little.

CHAMFORT

The Cynic's Breviary

Tags: Sebastien Roch Nicolas Chamfort


What's society built on
It's built on, built on bluff,
Built on bluff, built on trust,
What's society built on
It's built on, built on words,
Built on words, built on work

STEREOLAB

"Motoroller Scalatron"


In his long evolutionary history, man has scored few greater successes than his creation of human society. For it is on that primeval achievement that he has built those special qualities of mind and of behaviour which, in his own view at least, separate him from lower forms of life. If we sometimes tend to overlook this fact it is only because we have lived so long under the protective ambience of society that we have come to take its benefits for granted.

CHINUA ACHEBE

Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays

Tags: Chinua Achebe